Game Endeavours

DONE!!.. or Almost? I am quite happy on how the game is looking as of right now! The mechanics work quite nicely. I think it still has a bit of that Agar.io feeling to it but its definitely a different game on its own and that makes me feel proud! Updates:

Added all animations

Added a new “Impulse” mechanic.

Implemented the background but the image is not seamess on the x axis (will fix it!)

Made the enemies smaller

Made the enemies slower

Decreased the number of points

Fixed the dash bug, I find that dashing time of 4 seconds and a cooldown of 2 seconds gives good results but can be easily changed in the parameters.

Made some optimizations for the constant animations in order to not make the game laggy.

Made the enemies and players not able to go outside the world border! Extra Notes:

Just 2 days left until the deadline... so cannot do much from here so I will check for other major bugs.

Room for improvement:

 I feel that the overall game plays a bit slow

The dash mechanic works quite OK but it seems a bit boring to the player?

The Impulse is a bit hard to understand

The blackhole mechanic could be much more complicated and sophisticated than its present form.

On a Happy Note! :

I was told from my friends and the people who tested it that they want to keep playing it even after the first few plays! I am so grateful for that!  (The reason is for reaching a higher score and enjoying the blackhole mechanic)

I didn't want the main player to have a very “stand-out” / appealing animation so I made it quite simplistic. The animations will be played as sprites in Unity. Also there are great resources online on how to play the sprite sheets in Unity. Guideline: https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/introduction-to-sprite-animations Also I used this GREAT website to make the sprites called Piskel. If you are trying to make something fast and easy, Piskel is the place you are looking for. Piskel is AMAZING! I cannot recommend it enough!  They also have an app! It was a godsent for me. Thanks Piskel! Piskel Website: https://www.piskelapp.com/ Sprite sheet Sample:

This does not look like much but is the enemy prior the Blackhole “state”. The idea to make the enemy red came from the Red Giant planets that are the prior state of planetary systems before become black holes.

Since I am not expert on pixel-art I chose a fast method of taking an image and pixelate it in order to fake the look of retro pixel-art. I think it worked quite well for the background! Took a photo of a night sky and then pixelated it down. The difficult part was to make it work “seamlessly” as a loop map. 

Creating a “seamless” texture of the night sky is as difficult as it sounds but Ive made it work somehow!

Tutorial:

I finally found sometime to brush my messy head that was full of crazy ideas and narrow them down to a more “sane” scale. Note to self: Simple is Best. Also had some helpful feedback from some of my friends (gamers and not)! (Yes, they shouted at me AGARIO!!!! haha ) ============================================== So here`s a taste of my mind: Game Scene & Basic Game Logic/Player’s Aim:

 Player Movement to where the cursor is then consider ‘Q’=’Left Click’ & ‘E’=’Right Click’.

Player loads in a fairly decent sized playable area, one that is not too big (boundaries are reached fast), but not too small (boundaries are not on the edge of viewable game screen).

 Player has to beat his own best score in the game (like a mini arcade e.g., ‘Snake’).

Player has to fight or dodge enemies while trying to collect his points.

Enemies:

 Enemies will be simple AI who target the Player with mini projectiles but do not mindlessly spray them on sight (e.g., 3 bullets per 3 seconds).

 1st Enemy spawns at 1st point, at 10 points->2 Enemies will be hunting the Player, at 20->3 Enemies and so on according to x0 Points obtained by Player.

 If the Player ignores killing Enemies, Enemies will overwhelm Player.

 Player:

Player will have to either dodge bullets or ‘Shield’ against them. ‘Shield’ will deflect bullets and will have a cooldown of 6 seconds (Will be Accessed with ‘E’/’R-Click’).

 A way to get rid of enemies will be to use ‘Pulse’ that will push away enemies out of the boundaries or ‘Black Holes’ to kill them.  Cooldown of 3 seconds (Will be Accessed with ‘Q’/’L-Click’).

 Black Hole Mechanic:

 If the Enemy gets too close to the Player, they will explode causing a small ‘black hole’ that will draw the Player in.

 ‘Black Holes’ are not generated when Enemies are knocked out of boundaries.

 Enemies are not affected by the gravitational pull of ‘black holes’.

Player can use ‘Black holes’ to their advantage by using ‘Pulse’ to push Enemies into the ‘Black holes’ and rid of them.

 If the Player triggers an explosion and gets drawn in a ‘black hole’, their only way of escape will be to ‘power struggle’ against the gravity by spamming a key to get out of the specific pull radius.

‘Power Struggling’ out of a gravitational pull will not affect the speed of the Player (will not be exploited for gaining speed).

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Extra Notes:

Can use the ‘Dash’ mechanic instead of a ‘power struggle’ but it should still be only for when a gravitational pull is pulling the player in (so that it will not be used for gaining speed) as well as having a small cooldown (so that it will be more challenging for the Player to think his route instead of going through multiple gravitational pulls without having to worry).

 Enemies can still collect points (adds to the need of killing Enemies for more Points).

Could also add some extra points for killing Enemies.

 It would be better if I remove the casual Agar.io mechanic of orbs absorbing each other and growing, there should not be any growth mechanic.(?)

 Instead of the Player dying when exploding Enemies do explode, a strong knockback will be nice (like this the Player still has high chances of dying to boundaries if knocked back out of them or when thrown into previously generated black holes).

Playable Area Boundaries can be continue to infinity instead of hitting a “wall”.

Simple Main Menu Screen with a ‘High Score’ indicator (updated per play).

Basic Mechanics are looking a lot like Agar.io since I followed a tutorial on that but I made a couple adjustments to better fit my needs. (camera,speed etc) Next: - Add Player Dash - Add Enemies - Make the enemies “explode” and maybe spawn a simple emitter from its center etc. - Also add a “Shooting / Loose Mass” mechanic

I believe that for this project which is mainly based on mechanics it might seem like looking at visuals might be a waste of time but from my point of view it is the best “food” for the brain in order to think about the mechanics. In general, looking at pixel art always makes me very excited and motivated for some strange reason. It feels very nostalgic, simplistic yet there is something very sophisticated about it. I am mainly looking at landscape art, space, galaxies, clusters, simple shapes, meteors, coins, gold, rocks, mountains to name a few. Note: The following images are references found from the web. I do not take credit for these and were used for research and reference purposes only.